Opioids acting at the mu (morphine) receptor represent the vast majority of clinically used opioids and remain the most effective analgesics for treating moderate to severe pain. The use of morphine and similar compounds for the management of pain...

"Hydrophobic hydration of non polar molecules is the principal driving force that dictates several interfacial phenomena in nature such as self assembly of surfactant molecules, fate of environmental pollutants, wetting of surfaces, solution...

As a novel therapy for neurodegenerative diseases, transplantation of multipotent mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) requires extensive optimization in animal models before being implemented in clinical trials. It is a goal of our laboratory to...

Our overall research goal is focused on the development of a malaria transmission-blocking vaccine (TBV). The antigenic target, Pfs48/45 protein, is expressed on Plasmodium gametocytes, which are stages responsible for establishing parasite...

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) suppress effector immune responses and have been implicated in promoting chronic viral infections. Their role during influenza infection and vaccination, however, is still unclear. Influenza is a major public health...

The use of advanced functional polymer materials has gained an enormous impact during the past decades. Due to the fact that the physical properties of macromolecules are inherently dependent on their structure and connectivity on the nanoscale,...

Flux gradient terms and source terms are two fundamental components of hyperbolic systems of balance law. Though having distinct mathematical natures, they form and maintain an exact balance in a special class of solutions, which are called...

There are not enough donor lungs available to meet the increasing demand for lung transplantation. To compound the problem, transplant recipients have a projected survival time of only 5.7 years despite life-long immunosuppression. An alternative...

Stored red blood cell (sRBC) morphology is currently scored manually by technicians in a slow labor intensive process prone to error. This project proposes a way to simplify, automate, and expedite the morphology scoring process by using a novel...

The active human retrotransposon L1 is the most prevalent human retroelement, constituting 17% of the mass of the human genome and contributing significantly to mutagenesis. L1 mutagenizes human genomes in a number of ways including insertional...

Research using the adult mammalian model shows that regeneration in the limb is limited to the distal most portion of the terminal phalanx. Recent studies suggest that the cellular contributions made to the regenerating system are lineage...

Germanium nanoparticles (Ge NPs) may be fascinating for their electronic and optoelectronic properties, as the band gap of Ge NPs can be tuned from the infrared into the visible range of solar spectru. Further functionalization of those...

The objective of this project is to develop novel treatments, using expression-targeted gene therapy and minicell technology, to replace current methodologies used in the clinic for the treatment of carcinomas, especially transitional cell...